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Henley teams up with researcher Gabriella to investigate whether the virtual world is safe enough for young people and how it impacts society in the UK. We explore cyber crime, gaming and social media.
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00:23Hi I'm Gabriela and I'm Henley. We're gonna look at why people act the way to do a lion and
00:27how
00:28to stay safe. Let's start with the different crimes that can happen in the
00:32virtual world. First is ransomware. Hacks across the world can lock businesses out
00:37of their devices and systems. They encrypt their files then they hold it for
00:41ransom. They can give them a sort of key to decrypt the data and make it
00:45accessible again. Sometimes they can't get the data back at all. When lots of
00:49businesses lose hundreds of thousands of pounds through a cyber attack it can
00:52mean they have to put prices up and that destabilizes the way we buy and sell
00:56things. Cyber attacks can even affect NHS appointments or disrupt travel. There's
01:01also hacking into accounts, get a two-factor authentication and a strong
01:05password. Phishing is where criminals who look like strangers send emails asking
01:10for security information and personal details, sometimes threatening to release
01:14really personal details. Report them and don't click on any of the links. Definitely
01:19don't give any of your data away, even if the threat seems real. You can also check
01:23official websites for emails companies you would actually use to contact you. But
01:28emails can be spoofed, so they look official too. If you aren't expecting to be
01:31contacted, lots of places have helplines that you can use to check. Although these
01:35all happen virtually, they have real-life impacts with real-life consequences. We
01:40can't talk about crime online without talking about gaming. Do you game? Yeah, I use
01:45Roblox with my friends, even my younger brother plays it, and I've been playing it for
01:48years now. I even pay for upgrades. But Roblox has seen a lot of controversy. We asked Roblox to comment,
01:53but they refused to give us a quote on the record. They instead pointed us to their
01:56safety features, including age verification, facial age estimation, chat filters,
02:01reporting, parental controls and more. Los Angeles County government sued Roblox,
02:06alleging the platform failed to protect children from grooming, exploitation and
02:10sexually explicit content. A regulator in the Netherlands investigated Roblox to
02:14see if it was doing enough to protect children.
02:16I learned a lot about different gaming communities at an expo, Tilda, a gamer from
02:21Brighton to talk safety and community.
02:30Hi, Tilda. Thanks for coming all the way from Brighton today. I know you're a big gamer,
02:35so maybe you can help me investigate what's going on in the world of gaming.
02:38Definitely. Being at the Gaming Convention is the perfect place to explore the best
02:43parts of gaming and how young people can stay safe online.
02:47Do you like gaming?
02:49I do.
02:50You do.
02:52So my name is Reid and I play a character named Echo in a show called Arcane, but I also
02:58play him in
02:59like all of the League of Legends games and stuff. And so we have like the RPG game and we
03:04have a fighter
03:05game. My first PS5 that I got, I stayed on for like seven days straight. Do you think gaming's safe
03:11enough for young people?
03:12Everybody remembers that we're here to have fun. We're here to play and, you know, develop our
03:17skills and stuff. There's no hate involved. I also think it's like probably not telling as much of
03:23their personal information and just like staying within the bounds of of the game, you know, as opposed
03:28to being like, wow, there's like a bird outside on my, my street, 515. You know, you don't have to,
03:35you don't have to say all of that to have a good time, you know.
03:38It's clear to see that the community, including all the indie games from the creators to what was
03:45everyone's favorite part of gaming. I'm just as Toad from Super Mario. My hat is sweet.
03:51What do you say the best part of gaming is for you?
03:53There are so many different choices of games, different genres. You will always find something that you
03:58know it's all in love with and the ability to share that with friends.
04:02My name's Ali, part of the Vampire's Manor. It's not just watching everything happen.
04:07You get to press the buttons, you get to move the character around, you actually get to be in it.
04:12The video game right now, it allows the young generation, the children to create,
04:17develop, to be comfortable, they want to become.
04:20There are so many positives, but we still need to know the dangers and what's being done to protect
04:25young people. Andrew from Playsafe joins for a game.
04:29Do you think gaming's safe enough for young people?
04:31At the moment, if you were caught, let's say, doing something inappropriate in a game,
04:35you could get your account banned, but then you could just create a new account and come straight
04:39back in and that's one of the big challenges. Building relationships with people to scam them,
04:44try to get money or coins or items or whatever out of them.
04:47How do they get to the stage to be able to do it?
04:50If I become your friend, for example, on a game, and then we start messaging on Instagram
04:55or Snapchat, the game can't see that, the game can't moderate that, the game can't be held
04:59accountable for that. I play some games like Adopt Me where there's quite a lot of scamming.
05:04It's impossible to win or they just leave the game after they take your pack.
05:07Games like total drama. I feel like it can kind of turn into quite a abusive game,
05:12but it's also a really fun game. How do you track your online safety app helps for companies to take
05:17accountability? At its core, what the Online Safety Act is trying to do is put the responsibility
05:23on tech companies for the first time. The fines are enormous, like tens of millions of dollars
05:29worth of fines or pounds worth of fines. How important would you say gaming is?
05:32I grew up in a very rural area. There weren't very many buses. Gaming was huge for me. My grandma
05:38passed away when I was quite young and when I was sad about it, it was playing a game and
05:42talking to my
05:43mates about it online that helped me deal with a lot of that stuff. If you ever just want to,
05:48you know, talk to someone, it's like there's going to be someone there. I think they're really nice,
05:53like I'm growing up in the world like that.
05:59It's good to see that companies are trying. Ofcom regulates social media companies and makes
06:03sure they're doing everything they can do to keep young people safe. Ofcom also found that seven in
06:0810 teenagers had seen or heard harmful content online. Which isn't surprising. I spoke to MSPCC
06:14to find out more about Safety Online.
06:22What sort of things could like people who are in control put in place? Really important that we
06:28actually put the responsibility on the companies instead of on the young people. All it takes is a
06:33bit second for someone to post it. Yeah. And the regulations haven't got there like quick enough.
06:37Yeah. Yeah. Like murders. Yeah. Murders. Literally. I saw the murder of Charlie Kirk. Same. Free
06:44speech? Yeah, they have the freedom of speech to boo you. That's right. Same. I was scrolling and all
06:48sudden it's right in front of you. No one regulated that. Like that really messed me up for a couple
06:53of
06:53days because I was just so angry about that. I was just like, why? How are these companies not doing
06:59anything? He takes the innocence out of people. It really does. It does. And when you're already
07:04feeling like that you are even more vulnerable to posts about depression, self-harm, suicide,
07:10because it impacts you. The best that I've seen right now is Pinterest. You can't search self-harm.
07:16It will not have any results and it will direct you to a helpline. You can be a really big
07:23company but
07:23you can do this. Yeah. If you have the ability and you don't then that's when you. Yeah. When
07:30people struggle. Deepfakes is like a wise issue. Videos like porn for instance like it's just so
07:35like available for people. Like I really saw a lot of my old friends at like my old school. People's
07:40views were so skewed on it. Like people like there's so much addiction and it was just it was literally
07:45just because it was there. You can really see the difference between a male and a female's mind.
07:50Yeah. And it just it's crazy. And a lot of that is because
07:52of what's being recommended. And because of the stereotyping.
07:56So how do we move forward especially for those who become victims of crime on social media?
08:01When Nelly was 14 she sent news to her boyfriend on Snapchat. He sent them to another site and
08:06downloaded them so she wasn't notified. When they broke up months later he shared the images online.
08:11She got messaged every day and a stranger even blackmailed her. I spoke to Nelly and Lewis from the
08:16NSPCC about the crimes that happen every day on these platforms. I think it's really easy to become
08:22a victim of cyber crime. When I was 15 I had nude images of myself shared by my then ex
08:29-boyfriend
08:29around my secondary school. I reported this to the police after quite a few months of trying to deal
08:36with it by myself. But unfortunately no further action was taken.
08:40How did this like affect you mentally?
08:43It was absolutely devastating. I was really young at the time and like a lot of teenagers can relate
08:49insecure about the way I looked. And having this many people see me in like a really vulnerable way
08:56was really really horrible and really scary. And it did massively affect my mental health and I was so
09:02anxious that I couldn't go to school and I actually started losing my hair from from the stress.
09:07The NSPCC's report removed tool wasn't around then. Having your nude images shared had only been
09:13illegal for a couple of years at this point. If for example a nude image has been shared report
09:18removed means that you can report that image in a like an anonymous way and any time that someone
09:24tries to share that image again immediately is detected and taken down. What we see from the NSPCC
09:29perspective is that concerningly that there's been an increase in a lot of online offences,
09:35sexual extortion, so kind of online blackmail. Children can now be targeted with AI generated images
09:42as well. What advice would you give to young teenagers now? Really holding these social media
09:46companies accountable. You know they earn a lot of money from you using their platform and really they
09:53owe it to you. There's no shame in being victimised online and really the best thing that young people
09:59can do is is have these open and honest conversations like we're having today.
10:06In my research I found that although being online doesn't show physical harm
10:10it can impact people psychologically. Someone being stalked or harassed in person is scary
10:16but whatever happens to you in the game or in the metaverse it's still scary and there's still harm.
10:25Today we're going to learn how people can be hateful online so we've come to an art class in Slough.
10:30Content creator Melissa joined me and she's been working with charity CyberSmile to campaign for
10:34control over our algorithms so we don't see hate and harmful content. They even went to Downing Street
10:39and spoke to the Prime Minister.
10:41I am worried about algorithms because it is too quick for young people to go to material they shouldn't be
10:47vaccinated and we can't leave young people to try and self-police. The artists we met shared their thoughts
10:52about our feeds. We actually ran a behavioural experiment. Adult test accounts were exposed to
10:58harmful content as little as 16 seconds and the child accounts encountered harmful content within eight
11:05minutes so that's without liking anything. What are your reactions to hearing about that? I think it was
11:11surprising to hear for me. I think a lot of the time I said online I'm exposed to a lot
11:15of racist,
11:15misogynistic or homophobic content. They like themselves so much better from social media.
11:20Do you personally agree with the On The 16 ban of social media? I think the ban was a bit
11:25extreme
11:26considering on how many like useful uses social media has. Let's say you're gay and you don't know any
11:32people in real life. It reminds me that you're not alone and that people like you. I think it definitely
11:35keeps people educated. So do you say the government's like blinded by all the negative instead of looking
11:40at the positive? Yeah. But if you're letting people that are under 16 be uninformed there's a lot of
11:47like racism going on in the real world so you're essentially trying to make young people be blind to
11:53what's happening. After the break we'll take a closer look at cybercrime and being online in our
12:02Generation Cyber group chat. Welcome back to Generation Cyber. In this episode's group chat
12:11we went to Waterstate and Greenwich School's partnership in Kent. I spoke to Police Constable
12:16Callum, Cybercrime Officer DC Daryl, Member of Parliament for Chatham and Ellsford Tristan as well
12:22as content creator Joy. Then four students had the turn to talk about how they navigate the online space.
12:34I guess I want to start off with gaming and online safety. What happens if something does happen to
12:39you? If we do contact the police how will the police help in this circumstance? Block those people in the
12:45first instance but as we all know sometimes people are crafting will create a new profile and then
12:50and carry on that behaviour. Well that is a crime that you know it could be harassment if you're feeling
12:56that bothered that it's upsetting you it can be an actual criminal offence and you report that to
13:01the police we can find out who people are online you know it's not somebody just put a fake name
13:06so
13:07that's it they can hide behind that. We regularly talk to TikTok and to Facebook to Meta and they will
13:12tell us oh this is our subscriber this is their phone number and this is their address and then we
13:17can
13:17go and speak to those people. I'm not saying those people are going to get sent to prison you know
13:22that we're not sending 11 year olds to prison for sending it for being horrible online but certainly
13:27we've spoken to by the police at the very least. Hi so what's your name? My name is Betty. Hi
13:33Betty and
13:34how old are you? I'm 11 years old. And what's your question for the expert panel today? My question is
13:39as an influencer what do you do when you get hate? I think when it comes to protecting yourself from
13:45online hate I think when you're posting a lot that kind of opens you up to potential hate and I
13:50think
13:50one thing that's important is to have a strong sense of self and a support system and positive
13:56influences. I've been subject to racial abuse people saying the worst of the worst but what
14:02really helped me was being surrounded by amazing black women and having that strong sense of self
14:07within who I am as a person to the point where I read the comment and understand that this is
14:12coming
14:12from someone who is miserable or has you know views that obviously I don't share. My favourite button is
14:19the block button like it's my page if I don't want to see something if it's affecting me negatively
14:23I block I delete and talking to your support system your friends your family like sometimes comments
14:28do bother me and I'm always the first to run to my partner and tell him that. And since you're
14:32the
14:32local MP what does the government do to keep young people safe online? Well we're doing a number of
14:38things first of all the online safety app which means that we're restricting content and inappropriate
14:44content to people under the age of 18 so that you don't have to see some of this. We're also
14:49giving
14:50training to teachers my former profession to ensure that where you are getting people exploiting you
14:56online or approaching you online you can divulge that privately to teachers and then we can follow
15:02that up with the police. Hi so what's your name? I'm Teddy. Hi Teddy and how old are you? I'm
15:0811. And what's your question for the panel today?
15:10I'm like what's the rates of cyberbullying since social media and AI has came around?
15:16It's actually a really interesting question so let's see what the panel's there. Online bullying is a real problem. The
15:22fact that our phone devices now have access to us 24 7 and people have access to us and can
15:28engage with us at all times of day.
15:30How are you holding social media companies to account particularly in regards to the online safety act?
15:35It puts blockers on any inappropriate websites that you might have been accessing. You would have to be
15:41over 18 to access particular content. Companies that don't follow the rules on that will get fined up to 17
15:47million pounds per interaction so that's a significant amount of money which they're not going to want to
15:52lose. The government can take these websites offline completely. I don't know if you've seen recent news
15:58about Elon Musk's AI model called Grok and how it's sort of creating deep fake images of women,
16:06girls and children. How is the government able to step in and sort of handle that?
16:10Yeah so for those who don't know Grok is an AI platform which you can ask to do anything.
16:16In this case individuals requested that people remove clothing from adults but also had the feature
16:23for children as well. That is entirely inappropriate and so the government made it very clear to Elon
16:29Musk that if his company did not withdraw that optionality on Grok that they would potentially
16:35not only be fined but X would be removed from people's access in the UK. We have to act to
16:42protect
16:43and I'm thankful that Elon Musk has accepted that these features were unacceptable and he's taken that
16:49feature off. So it does show you that pressure can be applied and we can do the right thing.
16:54Hi what's your name? I'll be Joe. How old are you?
16:58Yeah. And what's your question for the panel today? Why are you playing for video games?
17:04Quite prominent games in the gaming world that people might have heard of such as Grand Theft Auto 5
17:09is an 18 because of the range of stuff that it has in it. But you might find that other
17:14games that
17:15are less violent and more sort of mature might be a little bit more sort of towards the age of
17:1912.
17:20Yeah so there's there's evidence um with because games now are really immersive and they're really
17:25realistic so and we've just got to be aware that people some people might take the game experience
17:31and try and act it out in real life or think that the behaviors in those games are uh how
17:38people
17:38should be acting and though most people won't do that there are sadly there are some that do so we
17:43do
17:43have to have these thresholds to protect people uh from inappropriate content. Hi so what's your name
17:49how old are you and what's your question for the expert panel today? Hi my name's Eloise I'm 11 and
17:56my
17:56question is how will we be able to restrain cyberbullying in the long run? That's actually really good and
18:02I've always wondered that too. It's my team specifically who work within schools we are there in order to
18:07assist and support there is a schools officer that's allocated for all different schools in Kent
18:12and for us it's been a really important thing to be able to speak to you all individually about
18:17things that are happening we are here in order to help. So there's currently a big conversation
18:22that's happening with young people with teachers and others about access to mobile phones so we all
18:29know that in schools you shouldn't be having them but we are going to be looking at tightening those
18:32rules up um and also about whether or not social media should be accessible for under 16s as well
18:39because we are beginning to see lots of negative consequences on people because of bullying but
18:45also access to material and abetting and other types of behaviours that are occurring. Thanks for
18:50joining me today on the student panel did you learn anything new from the experts? I mostly thought about
18:54how parliament and like police officers can get involved I thought that was nice to know. Do you think
19:00the police and parliament could do anything more to help with cybercrime? They're trying but they don't
19:06there's a lot of people who can find a way around it like they would go through getting different
19:12accounts on different devices or they could be using VPN. Would you all feel comfortable to go to
19:18police? Of course yeah obviously because obviously there's different versions of cybercrime that they
19:24would need to know about. Do you think you have like enough of a say in what happened to do
19:29the parliament
19:30with cybercrime? As a child not really like as a young person because I feel like it's quite hard
19:36because sometimes I feel like I don't know what I'm thinking or what to say or what I don't know
19:42if
19:42that makes sense. Obviously you have your own voice and you should use your own voice when you've got the
19:47opportunity to but I don't think our voices would be heard more than people older than us. I think when
19:53you're younger you're not really taken seriously. So does anyone here like game or play games? I do.
19:59Yeah. Not when I'm feeling stressed but when I feel lonely I often do then probably play a few games.
20:04Do you think it's like a comfortable welcoming place to be on? I think it's very comfortable because
20:10different games differ from others. You have online games where strangers can still contact you,
20:15message you. I think that is quite strange but most of the games that I'm in contact with are very
20:19story based. I enjoy myself and I play them. When you go on social media is it a safe environment
20:25to
20:25be in? No. Why is this? I think there's a lot of like misogyny everywhere like in a lot of
20:32topics that
20:33I find quite a lot which is a bit hurtful and then also like a lot of racist stuff I
20:40see all the time
20:41and it's just really sad to know that people are just spiteful like that and they just share it around
20:47and there's some apps that will allow like allow that due to the guidelines and stuff.
20:52What's all your experiences on social media? I have had WhatsApp used differently and how it
20:58shouldn't have but I think like the guidelines don't pick it up if you have had that experience.
21:07Obviously it's really different so it really depends on like the different point of views
21:11of what kind of like sides you're on social media because you could be on like the good side where
21:17you've got like all the positive people and then obviously some a lot of people a lot of people
21:22around our age are in the negative zone. Do you have any younger siblings that use WhatsApp and other
21:27social media? Yeah. Yes. She's not very on WhatsApp most of the time I know she's always on TikTok which
21:33is great because she has a private account she adds people who only she knows which I think is great
21:39because we need more younger people like that who don't or families that watch over the young ones
21:45if that makes sense because having parents that just allow their kids to do all this stuff without
21:52being safe can I think affect them in future. Yeah because on WhatsApp you can update your status
21:57like sharing pictures so do you feel comfortable in your sister using this? Most of the time but she doesn't
22:02talk about it like I don't know and I feel like now I should be more aware because of what
22:07today is
22:08like with AI and the rest of that because I think social media is becoming more hurtful because it's
22:15more being used. Do you think there's more positives or negatives with social media? It's a bit in the
22:22middle because say for example Snapchat you can add a random person and if you have snap maps open they
22:30can find your location but whereas it's sort of like WhatsApp you can contact your friends and when
22:37Covid happened that would have been a massive thing to have to see people online so you wouldn't have
22:43gotten lonely. About the snap map things there is actually an option to only show it to some certain
22:49people so that's a good thing but I think Snapchat's done well. Now that you're older do you wish you
22:55did
22:55something different when you started on social media when you're younger? Yeah definitely. Why? Well
23:01because I've realised that when I when I was younger I didn't actually realise the harms of what
23:05like if I was talking to someone online who I obviously did not know I didn't know that what
23:10what the risks would be. I think it's a way for them to feel like powerful but it can also
23:16they don't
23:17think about what the other person might feel with their mental health. Thank you for joining me
23:22today on The Shooter Panel.
23:57Thank you for joining us today on The Shooter Panel.